Black or Blue

A friend of mine posted on Facebook what at first appeared to be a fairly tame question: Do you prefer writing with a blue or a black pen? The first few comments were geared towards favourite AFL footy teams. Geelong fans were blue-penners and Collingwood fans, black. For those from out of town, Geelongs colours are blue and white and Collingwood, well, you get the picture.

I don’t follow either of those teams so that wasn’t what immediately jumped into my head to justify my favouring blue when having to put pen to paper. So, back to the question. Why blue indeed? Well for me blue is a calm peaceful colour. Even when I’m scribbling down a note I still have a reasonably strong tendency to seek out a blue pen over a black one. I’ll push aside a box full of black pens to make absolutely certain I won’t miss the opportunity to write with a nice relaxing colour. Black seems so harsh, fierce, unforgiving… dead. It has nothing to do with what I’m writing. It’s a repelling colour. Angry. It’s almost equivalent to typing with Caps Lock on.

Typing. It’s weird though. Word processor text and the resulting printout is usually in black text. I have no problem with that. It’s only with handwriting I have this slight fixation. Having said that, I must admit one day I had to print something out, a resumé or something at the last minute, and my black ink ran out. I changed the font colour of the entire document to blue and printed it in blue instead!

Anyway, getting back to my friend’s Facebook question, I replied stating what I said above, in not so many words, and chuckled with amusement when my comment appeared in black text on a blue background. Who would have thought?